Bringing up baby, 10,000 years ago

. The Ornaments of the Arma Veirana Early Mesolithic Infant Burial - Further finds from an infant burial in Italy provides insights on the use of baby carriers and family heirlooms in prehistory, an UdeM-led study reveals. CONTENU - It seems logical enough: even in their earliest history, humans must have needed something to carry their babies around in as they moved from place to place. But because little hard evidence of this exists - no infant-sling fabrics discernible in archeological digs, and very few prehistoric baby burials, besides - it's been anybody's guess that the practice actually took place. Now, however, new research by a team of Université de Montréal scientists argues for evidence of the use of baby carriers about 10,000 years ago, throwing light on how children were cared for in prehistory and how they were linked socially to their community. Led by Claudine Gravel-Miguel, an Arizona State University (ASU) anthropologist now working as a guest researcher in the lab of UdeM anthropology professor Julien Riel-Salvatore , the team combined innovative analytical methods to extract hard-to-obtain information about perforated shell beads found in the burial of a 40- to 50-days-old female baby, nicknamed Neve, at the cave site of Arma Veirana, in Liguria, Italy. The team's findings are published in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory.